Purity
by Shuck
Summary: Perhaps purity does not lie in one's lack of virtue, but rather in the heart of hope. Jun.


**Purity**

Purity was an ugly thing, a concept of old that was more like a cage than a characteristic. She frowns; the little white stick between her fingers mocks her with blue stripes that are too deep and too rich in the pale light of her bathroom, as if to make her pregnancy even more apparent to her.

She sets it on the edge of the bathtub and sinks from where she sits atop the toilet seat. Her hands go to her face; she sighs and feels her shoulders shake. She is pregnant. By all means she has always dreamed of becoming a mother, but not now and certainly not like this.

She thinks of that face, that angry, pain-riddled face. Of strong arms that held her only once and Jun Kazama can feel nothing but regret.

* * *

Her family will not accept it though she knows eventually she must confess to it. Her parents were always the moral kind, upholding virtuous character and disposition. To them, the idea of a child born out of wedlock is second to evil itself, and for a moment Jun can barely breathe. Across her kitchen table Lei watches her with the sad and concerned gaze of a helpless friend, but he does not understand, not fully.

The pale teal of her ribbon lies in her hands and she stares forlornly between it and Lei. Lei will support her; he understands a mistake, that these things happen and that this is all perfectly natural in its way, but she longs to have that understanding from her parents. Perhaps if _he_ were still here, if it had not become apparent that no words of encouragement on her part could save him, if he was perhaps willing to accept the news of his sired product, then maybe it could be different.

But it's a hopeless thought. Whether Kazuya Mishima is alive or dead Jun has no way of knowing anymore. Whether any of her attempts to pull him from the jaws of madness has sunk in, whether he will amend and fight the evil in his heart or succumb to it, Jun does not know. She suddenly feels helpless, briefly runs her hand over her abdomen which does not betray her secret and begins to cry.

Lei grips the hand that limply holds her ribbon with his and it is strong yet gentle, the hold of a man who is loyal and sincere and trustworthy and it dawns on Jun as she cries silent tears what a mistake to think it was anything other than a ploy.

* * *

She is rejected, cast out, a shame to her upstanding parents and their old, rigid ways.

Her bump is larger and she can feel the life of the little one growing within her. Deep in the forests of Yakushima, Jun sits alone and in despair. Around her the trees lie heavy with the weight of rainfall and distant sadness, cocooning her in sorrow. She gives no thought to the damp of her clothes or the chill in her bones, feels a faraway urge to let the cold take her and make her breathless, but under the palm of her hand that frail life is warm and something calls her back from the brink of misery.

She remembers the pull, the desperate, crackling energy of Kazuya, of his evident pain that she was desperate to soothe. For everything she was noble and she was good. She believed in the teachings of her family and thus she was drawn, helpless and shaking and new to something so beyond her to this red-eyed, scarred man with the touch of a devil.

She wishes she could have been stronger. She wishes that she could put it all down to fate, to something greater, but a small voice tells her this is not so. This was not the blind unity of fate, the merging of good and evil for some greater, more wondrous purpose. It was her own attraction, her own desire. How these foolish notions of purity and nobleness run so deep! She almost sobs into the heavy air of the forest.

She is homesick though now she has no home; she is lonely though she is not alone, not truly. She thinks of it, of that quiet, tiny presence inside her womb and wonders if she can truly love it. Somehow she feels cold and that makes her feel more wretched. Her eyes close and somewhere overhead, a bird calls into the quiet of the air; its voice loud and piercing and full of life.

When her eyes open, Jun Kazama determines to make a new home.

* * *

Her dreams tell her things, they tell her of the darkness inside Kazuya lying dormant yet searching. At once she feels anger, white-hot and self-directed. The face of her one-time lover cracks into millions of glass shards before her. She sees the face of evil laughing and encroaching upon her as she sleeps, licking her growing womb with greedy, ink-stained tendrils.

They threaten despair upon her, upon her unborn child. Kazuya's taint seeks the flesh of his own and when she wakes in the lonely nights sweating and close to screaming, Jun is more alone than ever though her belly continues to swell and the life within her grows day by day.

In the pure darkness of night, the cold forest air is all that Jun needs to quell her anxiety. She hears a voice, like a woman's song from the heavens urging her to be strong, to have hope. When her hand trails over the rounded bump of her belly, Jun understands. She feels tiny kicks, can sense the heartbeat in sync with hers contained within her blood and she knows that she loves this child and knows it to be innocent. To be _pure_.

* * *

She is an unknown in this place. Yakushima is her home now, though she is a stranger amongst its people. No one here judges her, knows of her secrets or her past. She finds some comfort in the kindness of her midwife, of nurses and doctors that wipe her brow and pet her hair so softly. Everything is dizzying, filled with pain and screaming and a great weight that she feels above her rather than inside her.

That voice speaks in her ear and whispers comforts between short gasps and groans, guides her and soothes her and tells her that she cannot give up; she must push forward and birth the life within her. She must resist the anticipation of something dark at the back of her mind, be strong now and after, be strong from this moment onward.

It's a blur; she is exhausted and half delirious. Tiny lungs fill the air with crying and the pain stops; her body falls forward onto the bed and into the arms of an attending nurse and her child is born to the world.

She feels her body pulled back, her head comes to a pillow. Her eyes are closed and she can barely think to reach her arms out when the midwife draws close, her child bundled close. She feels the gentle weight against her chest; the tiny life is no longer crying. Jun manages the strength to open her eyes and stare down into that little face, the face of her son who mutters in her arms as a helpless thing.

Tiny fingers struggle to grip the end of hers and Jun is breathless for an entirely different reason.

* * *

She knows what she must do.

In the wooden confines of her wilderness home she knows it is just her and Jin. Her son sits bundled in swaddling cloth safe in her arms, but that voice is back, that woman who sounds like happiness and Aether is wishing her luck and encouraging her strength. Jin is meant for great things, but the taint of the father is never far from the son; the apple falls close to the tree.

It fills her with dread, with hopelessness. In that tiny, innocent face Jun's love and fear is realised fully. She wishes for a different way, for a different life surrounded by family and supporting friends, but she is alone. Only she can bear this burden, only she can raise this tiny child with the true value of goodness and purity, only she can give him the hope he will need to overcome this darkness.

She brushes the hair from her son's brow, once again traces her finger against his tiny hand and feels the weak grip of his trust around her digit. She smiles and she can feel the smile of that woman who speaks, of the warmth of her expression at the back of her neck.

Perhaps purity does not lie in one's lack of virtue, but rather in the heart of hope, and for as long as that hope remains Jun will be pure, Jin will be pure, and all goodness and happiness to be had in the world will remain.


End file.
